Fine Motor Play: Rescue the Frozen Gold

Gabrielle Fischer Posted On Aug 13, 2020 | Motor Skills

Sensory play setups don’t have to be big and messy still to achieve a whole host of benefits for your child. This simple water-based activity makes the most of Learning Resources’ fabulous fine motor tools and is sure to get your child working for their hands hard.

What you need:

Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set
Small ice cube tray (we used a fun silicone star-shaped one)
Bowl of water (one cold for making the ice cubes and one warm for melting them)
Selection of gold sequins (we used stars and leaves) and glitter
Tray or container to help contain the mess

Let’s Freeze the Gold!

What I love most about this type of activity is that there are two components of play all rolled into one. Making the gold-filled ice cubes is just as much fun as melting them!

I set up a tray with all of the supplies needed and invited my 3-year-old to add gold sequins and glitter to each star compartment. She loved carefully selecting each compartment’s ‘ingredients’ and choosing different tools to transfer them. This was great for getting her to work on her pincer grip, and we even added in some simple counting.

Next up, it was time to add some water. The Twisty Dropper tool is perfect for toddlers due to the large squeeze area on the handle. As the nozzle hole is not too large, it allowed my little one good control over how much water was added (avoiding flooding the compartments and all of their contents).

The final step was to add one last sprinkling of golden glitter because, let’s face it, no amount of glitter is ever enough in the eyes of a toddler! Now they were ready to be carefully set in the freezer for a few hours. If you are using larger ice cube compartments, they will likely need to sit overnight to be fully frozen.

Time to Rescue the Gold!

There was so much excitement when we retrieved the ice cube tray from the freezer! My daughter’s face lit up when she saw her gold stars and leaves buried in glitter sprinkled ice cubes. Her first task was to get the ice cubes out of the mold. This is where a silicone mold is great because her little hands could manipulate it and the frozen stars just popped out.

As soon as the stars were free, she got to work trying to pick out the golden treasure with her hands. She managed to get some free but needed a new tactic to get the frozen ones out. That’s when the bowl of warm water came in handy. She used the Twisty Dropper again to squirt warm water onto the ice cubes and watched as they started to melt. You could also add salt to this setup and investigate the speed at which the ice melts.

As the frozen stars melted, my little one was able to rescue more and more gold. She carefully put the ‘treasure’ back on her tray, and again we snuck in some numeracy by counting each piece of gold she rescued.

Even though this sensory play setup is on a smaller scale, it has so much to offer in terms of sensory exploration and fine motor development. My toddler was constantly using the different tools, which all worked her hand muscles. She was also using her senses to explore all of the other materials. We discussed what we saw and felt as the water changed to ice cubes. Such a fun early link to science for any inquisitive kiddo! And best of all, she re-filled the ice cube tray, ready to repeat the activity all over again tomorrow!

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Gabrielle Fischer | Posted on Aug 13, 2020

4 Simple DIY Sorting Activities with Counters

Counters are a great way to encourage toddlers and preschoolers to develop their sorting skills. In this blog we are sharing four quick and easy ways to set up sorting activities with just a few basic materials.

Set of counters (we used our favorite Learning Resources All About Me Family Counters)
A4 white paper or card
Markers (black, red, blue, yellow, green, purple and orange)
Dot markers (red, blue, yellow, green, purple and orange)
Ruler

Why is Sorting Important?

Before we get into the details about the activities, it’s important to point out that sorting activities offer a huge host of learning opportunities for toddlers and preschoolers. They may seem simple, but your little one is developing a range of skills when working with counters. For example, their little hands are constantly moving which is helping their fine motor skills to develop (these skills are key for writing as they get older). They will also have the opportunity to explore counting and use number vocabulary, as well as color recognition and vocabulary development. For my 3 year old, sorting activities often also lead to imaginative play, especially when she uses her family counters.

How to Set Up the Activities

The great thing about making DIY sorting activities is that they take a matter of minutes to set up. Be sure to prep the sorting sheets before inviting your child to take part or else you risk them losing interest waiting for the activity to be ready. Simply use markers to draw out sorting sheets like the ones in the photo. Carefully consider your child’s passions and try to incorporate them into your sorting sheets. My toddler loves putting the family counters into homes, hence I made the houses sheet. She also really enjoys sorting by color and lining up her toys.

Activity 1: Walk the Line to Meet a Friend

Whenever my little one plays with these counters she always likes to make them be friends. I drew some dotted lines in black marker and put the same kind of counter at each end of the line. I invited her to walk one of the counters along the line to meet their friend. This was great for her fine motor skills as she had to manipulate the counters around the different shapes of the lines. She also demonstrated color vocabulary, chatting away about how the red cat was walking along to meet the yellow cat. There was lots of imagination creating little personalities for the characters in her play too.

Activity 2: Family Homes

For this one, I drew six different colored houses and then gave each house a number. My daughter enjoyed sorting the correct number of family counters into the correct colored home. There was an element of problem-solving for this one too because the houses were not big enough to fit too many large counters in. She carefully had to figure out the best combination of counters to fit in the house. I was sure to encourage as much talking as she did to support her vocabulary development. Once she had finished sorting, she then wanted to enjoy sending some of the counters to different houses for playdates.

Activity 3: Colorful Stepping Stones

Dot markers are a great way to quickly add colorful sorting marks to a piece of paper. Here I added different colored dots to the page and told my toddler that they were colorful stepping stones. She added the correct counters onto the stepping stones (she would make them jump on, with ‘boing’ sound effects of course). I intentionally also worked in some numeracy by adding 1-6 dots instead of all the same number of dots for each color. That way my daughter could count as she placed the family counters on the dots and each time she was reaching a different number.

Activity 4: Color Lines

This one is super simple but is always enjoyed. Just draw outlines in the different colored markers and invite your little one to line up the counters on the correct color of the line. I didn’t give my daughter specific instructions as I wanted her to have some choice. I thought she would try and line them up standing along the line, but she chose to make them lie down. This was another great way to work on her fine motor skills, as well as getting her to think about the size. She realized that the ‘Mummy and Daddy’ counters were much bigger than the ‘baby’ counters. She started to plan which order she would add them in and enjoyed trying to get them perfectly lined up.

A Few Tips

I always find that my toddler responds better to activities like these when she has some choice. I presented her with the four sorting sheets and let her choose which order to do them in. I also provided her with all of the counters so that she had the freedom to choose which counters to use. If you are doing these with a younger child try to just focus on one simple aspect when sorting, for example color or size. If working with an older child you can make the activity more challenging by combining several aspects of sorting, for example, color and number, or size and color.My final tip is to encourage your child to also enjoy making their own sorting sheets. I always leave out the art supplies to allow my daughter the opportunity to make her own sorting sheet. This encourages engagement, and also introduces more creativity and fine motor skill work as well. Do you have a favorite way to sort counters? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments! Explore other Learning Resources counting toys and counting ideas as well.